


A Route of Evanescence

by middlemarch



Category: Poldark (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Dreams, F/M, Late Night Conversations, Marriage, Romance, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-28 22:18:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10840605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: She knew the seasons of the sea but not the currents in her marriage.





	A Route of Evanescence

“Do you wish you never came back, then?” Demelza said quietly. It was one of the times they were uneasy with each other again, Ross’s jests fewer, more cutting, Demelza more silent except that she had to swallow all the words she wanted to say. To shout or scream. She had to tighten her grip on whatever she held and tell herself there was still the shore, the sky, still Garrick wanting to run in the surf and butt his head against her, the ruination of all her attempts at being a lady. Ross had woken her again in the night with his exclamations and she had soothed him back to waking. She could hear it in the way he breathed, shifted beside her, without looking to see his dark eyes open, the moonlight making the whites of his eyes silvery.

“What d’you mean?” he asked. _Why do you ask_ he might have easily said, _how are you the mistress of Nampara_ , _will the mine yield ore_ , all questions that were more sensible. But he never was that, not Ross Poldark, not sensible nor wise, and she’d known it when he hired her and every day after.

“You cry out in your sleep, your dreams—you must dream of the colonies, I think. Do you regret it?” she answered. She did not pull the sheet up to her shoulder as she wanted to, not yet. She would wait for satisfaction of whatever kind she might get.

“Regret? Not the word I’d choose,” he said. He’d be thoughtful then, philosophical Verity might have said but not Demelza. Those sort of words were not for the likes of her. She knew salt and blood, bone and breaker and want, how he felt upon her but not with her, how it felt to be told it was her home and to know it was only her house.

“No?” she murmured. He might drift off and then she must. The meals wouldn’t make themselves, the washing wouldn’t stir the cauldron and the Lord knew Prudie wouldn’t make haste without a sharp word.

“I couldn’t have imagined this,” he said and she knew he was being honest, damn him.

“No. You’d always been lucky before, hadn’t you?” she said before she could bite the words back and suck the marrow from them. There was a pause, the silence that held the moon’s rise and every star over the sea, and then Ross laughed.

“Not as I am now,” he replied, rolling over as he uttered the words and laying his warm hand on her ribs, moving it to cup her breast, nuzzling the crook of her neck with his rough cheek.

“Sweetheart, you’re a bloody fool, aren’t you?” he said against her throat. The irritable impulse to pull away faded not with _sweetheart_ but _fool_. She was one, she knew it, for hoping every time he meant it and that she would be able to tell. She took what was offered, his touch and his breath and closed her eyes so she didn’t have to see if he still watched her. If he told the truth.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
